Chapter 22
ISLA
Isla wasn’t sure where they’d ended up, but frankly, she didn’t care.
All she could focus on was the feeling of Kai’s lips on her neck, his hands on her hips, waist, and breasts.
The brushes of his skin beneath her fingers as she worked down the buttons of his shirt.
Fresh from their time parading on the veranda, waving and beaming at their people, they had crashed through a door in the Northern Hall, not even bothering to check what or who lay inside.
“Kai,” she moaned his name, the backs of her thighs colliding with something solid, a table maybe, sending whatever had been on it clattering to the floor.
Isla turned, Kai’s breath hot on the shell of her ear as she finally took in their surroundings.
A private showroom or well-decorated study, barely illuminated by the moonlight spilling through the window, the art and sculptures that surrounded them were shadowed.
On the floor by their feet, a ceramic bowl that had fallen from the raised display platform ceased its rolling.
She couldn’t see if it had cracked. Couldn’t make out if the piece had been valuable. Hell, all of this must’ve been.
“Shit.”
“It’s fine,” Kai breathed, grabbing her ass with both hands as he lifted her, wincing slightly as she hooked her legs around his middle.
Isla tried to wriggle from his grasp. “You’re hurt.”
“I don’t care.” Gripping her so tightly she thought she’d bruise, he pinned her between him and the wall.
Goddess. She savored the feeling of all his strength and power lined up against her. Her nails scratched at the bare skin of his back, his muscles flexing beneath the touch.
“Do you know how impossible it is for me to control myself around you?” he ground out in time with his hands slipping beneath the heavy fabric of her gown, baring her to the cool air and the heat of his skin. “Do you know how badly I want to destroy this fucking dress?”
“Don’t rip—” Isla whimpered as he pressed his hips forward so perfectly that her core throbbed. “Goddess, just get this off me.”
Kai chuckled, dragging his teeth down the column of her neck, biting at her fluttering pulse.
Her body tightened when he clamped down on the sensitive space between her neck and shoulder, not enough to darken her mark again, but enough to remind her who she belonged to. “Is that a command, Your Majesty?”
Isla moaned as his touch slid higher, mapping every bend, curve, and hollow of her body, claiming it.
She rolled her hips, needing more friction—needing him inside her.
His fingers, his tongue, his cock, she didn’t care.
The ember that had bloomed earlier when they kissed had become an inferno that raged hotter than the sun itself.
More than a lust for his body. More than lust entirely.
It was madness—all-consuming madness.
Somewhere in her haze, Isla must’ve said yes, because her feet were on the ground now, realizing just how pliant her body had become. From him. For him.
She turned and braced her hands on the wall in front of her, beside a myriad of fine ceramics displayed in a glass case that she could see Kai in.
He worked at her back, unthreading the laces of her gown, a smug smirk as he purposefully took his time, kissing her neck and skimming his knuckles over her spine.
Occasionally, he’d grab her face, twisting her head back to kiss her lips, nip at them.
She rubbed her thighs together in a demand for him to hurry up, earning another deep laugh.
Once her gown was a heap on the floor, the cool darkness of the room swept over her flaming skin, her nipples pebbled and aching against the silk of her slip, her body screaming for him to touch her, just touch her.
As if he could hear those screaming thoughts, Kai answered, his arms snaking around her and pulling her back against his bare chest. Her gaze focused on the two of them in the glass, their crowns still glinting on their heads.
She bit down on a whine as he skimmed over her peaked nipple, his other hand dropping lower to her underwear. He shredded through it before his gentle fingers grazed up her sensitive inner thigh. Coaxing, teasing, not quite reaching where she needed him.
“Do you remember the first time I got to hold you like this?” Kai’s voice was a deep rolling purr.
Isla’s mind reeled back. Every touch of his had been branded into her, every embrace an imprint on her soul. The way their bodies molded. The way his thumb skimmed just beneath her breast, how his fingers traced her hips.
She whispered, “When we touched for the first time.”
A maddening accident after everything they’d done to stay apart.
Maybe being pushed into him in the chaos of the rogue attack was another one of Fate’s cruel games.
Kai hummed, his fingers climbing higher, his head dipping lower into the crook of her neck.
Isla reached up, wrapping her arm around him and twisting her fingers in his hair.
She braced her feet further apart and stretched out to give him more access.
He heeded the hint and took advantage, hands mapping a greedy path over her skin.
She felt him smile against her neck, and they made eye contact in the reflection of the glass case.
“I damn near lost my mind,” he said, his touch ghosting over where she ached for him most. “I still don’t think I’ve recovered from it.
Not being able to touch you, taste you, the woman who ravaged, ruined, and saved me with just one look, a few words.
” Isla gasped as he finally pressed his fingers to her clit, moving in lazy circles that sent pleasure zapping through her.
Her toes curled, and she rolled her hips, breathing his name.
“After that night in the gardens, you became every dream. Every waking thought.”
With her eyes sliding closed, she lolled against his shoulder, baring her neck entirely to him as he worked between her thighs. His circles grew tighter, faster, with just enough pressure to have her straining and digging her nails into him. Her lower belly knotted; her muscles burned.
“You became mine,” she exhaled before a whimper fell from her lips. “And I—I hated you for it.” His muscular arm held her closer as her legs shook, as he crept her nearer to bliss.
Kai’s chuckle rumbled down her spine, igniting every nerve.
“I never hated you, you know. Just the fact that I couldn’t have you.
Because I knew this…” Tighter and tighter.
Faster. Relentless. Isla was like a bowstring pulled taut, completely prepared to fall apart.
“Getting to watch and feel you come undone would be something I’d never experience, and that was a tragedy—because look at you. ”
There was enough command in Kai’s voice that Isla opened her eyes. In the reflection of the glass, she took in their embrace, the way he held her, and how her body responded to him. Her slip may as well have disappeared; the silken fabric was hiked up her hips and pulled down below her chest.
“You’re a goddess,” he whispered into her ear, and it was an effort for her not to fold entirely. “One I plan to worship for a very, very long time.”
It was difficult to oppose that. “But the—the party.”
“Can wait.” He scraped his teeth over her mark, and Isla felt the bond lock up, thrum from that deep chasm of them they’d unearthed during the coronation. “So, do you want to come now, or do you want to play?”
Isla bit her lip so hard it nearly bled, watching as Kai touched her, worshiped her. She was so close that thunder rumbled in the distance, a precursor to the streak of lightning that threatened to strike through her. But—
“S—stop.”
Kai immediately ceased his movements but still held her tight as Isla sucked down air, trembling legs rubbing together in her tumble away from oblivion.
A unique form of torture, but the ecstasy that awaited when she climbed that mountain again and finally fell would be worth it.
Especially if she had him buried inside her.
Suddenly, Kai gripped her hips and whipped her around. Her back collided with the wall; her head protected by his hand that beat it there. He corralled her as he held her stare—dark, lustful, and dangerous. “Mark me.”
“What?”
Kai’s eyes narrowed—the eyes of an alpha, a king, but also her mate, her equal. Commanding, yet something submissive lay beneath them. Just for her. “Mark me.”
Isla’s brows furrowed. “I… I can’t.” If she couldn’t shift, couldn’t draw her claws, she certainly wouldn’t be able to draw her teeth.
“Yes, you can,” Kai said. “I can feel you in there.”
Isla shook her head. “I tried during the coronation, and I couldn’t.”
“There was too much noise. Now, it’s just you and me.” He leaned in closer, enough that she had to crane her neck to look at him. “I didn’t think you were someone who backed down from a challenge.”
“I’m not.”
“Sounds like you are to me.”
Isla growled low in her throat, and Kai’s grin was handsomely feral.
Each one of his following words, though easy and languid, hit hard and burrowed deep.
“Show the world how I belong to you. My mate, my wife, my warrior, my queen. Every breath, every beat of my fucking heart is yours. It has been since the night I met you.” He moved even closer, his lips barely brushing hers.
“So, take me, use me, claim me. I’m at your mercy until the end of time. That is my vow to you.”
Isla had never welcomed such carnal possessiveness so readily.
Ancient, claiming, and cruel, it tore viciously through her blood.
She focused on the dark red simmer behind the storms of Kai’s eyes, the way his lumerosi glowed.
His wolf howled out for hers, for the piece that had been missing for far too long.
Isla could feel her wolf attempt to rise in response.
Her eyes drew over Kai’s face one last time before she dropped her head, closed her eyes, and breathed.